Mark Mendelsohn (DOJ Deputy Chief, Fraud Section and the DOJ’s FCPA “top cop”) recently defended the 2008 Siemens enforcement action. This post takes issue with Mendelsohn’s defense of the Siemens enforcement action.
Today’s post includes FCPA excerpts from various speeches/comments made by enforcement officials over the past couple of days. Stepping to the podium will be Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer; Mark Mendelsohn – Deputy Chief of the DOJ Fraud Section; and Cheryl Scarboro – the head of the SEC’s newly formed FCPA unit.
The seemingly minor case involving Telecommunications D’Haiti (“Haiti Teleco”) keeps on giving. The recent plea by Jean Fourcand is the most recent news in a case in which the DOJ has cast a wide net.
Both the antibribery provisions and the books and records and internal control provisions of the FCPA apply to issuers. That was easy. What is not so easy is figuring out just which companies are issuers.
FCPA Compliance Attorney Thomas Fox discusses how the Travel Act, which Robert Kennedy urged Congress to enact, is impacting the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act today.
The U.K. Serious Fraud Office announced that it has “reached an agreement with BAE systems that the company will plead guilty” to the offense of “failing to keep reasonably accurate accounting records in relation to its activities in Tanzania.”
Dan Hurson provides tips and advice on how to handle an internal corporate investigation gleaned from his experience as Assistant Chief Litigation Counsel with the SEC enforcement division.
Whether a fictitious “foreign official” (the first scenario) or a real, but non-participating “foreign official” (the second scenario) the big question is: can offering to bribe or paying a bribe to such a “foreign official” constitute a substantive FCPA violation?
Today, the DOJ announced the indictment of 22 “executives and employees of companies in the military and law enforcement products industry” for scheming to bribe foreign officials in the “largest single investigation and prosecution against individuals in the history of DOJ’s enforcement of the FCPA.”
Voluntary disclosure of potential FCPA violations is a tricky issue, made even more difficult given the potential conflict of interest FCPA counsel has in advising the company as to the important disclosure issue, particularly where the disclosure only involves a potential FCPA violation.
